Press Releases

- Friday 4th, ‘Paris City Hall Declaration” with Mayors and Governors around the world at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders.
- Panel discussion with Mayors of Rio, Dakar, and Istanbul at the Grand Opening on ‘City Solutions’.
- City reaffirms shared responsibility of the world’s citizens to solve the problem of climate change and promises to establish specific action plans.

At 17:35 local time on Friday, 4th of December, Mayor Park participates in the Climate Summit for Local Leaders in Paris, France, as the President and Honor Chairman of ICLEI and jointly declares the Paris City Hall Declaration: a Decisive Contribution to COP21′.

The Climate Summit for Local Leaders takes place at Paris City Hall, with over 800 participants, including Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change Michael Bloomberg, the 3 city networks ICLEI, C40, and UCLG, mayors, officials of regional governments, NGOs, and civilian experts.

ICLEI : A network of local governments for sustainable development, with 87 countries and over 1000 regional governments and regional government networks.C40 : A group of large cities that have promised responsibility to climate change, a total of 76 cities.UCLG : Alliance of local governments from around the world. 136 countries and over 1000 local governments.

The Paris City Hall Declaration clearly states that advancing and sharing climate change solutions is a shared responsibility of all citizens around the world, and that promoting and sharing solutions to climate change is a matter of rights, equality, progress, and social justice, and includes detailed executive plans to produce resilience strategies and action plans to adapt to the rising incidence in climate-related hazards by 2020 and support transition to 100% renewable energy in communities.

At the Grand Opening that takes place at 9:00 local time, Mayor Park participates in a panel discussion on City Solutions, together with the Mayors of Rio, Dakar, and Istanbul.

In the opening speech, Mayor Park emphasizes that “Earth is already a gigantic network of cities. We should bring together smallest efforts with the creativity and responsibility of local governments, extend them beyond national boundaries. We must think globally, and act locally.”

In line with his statement, Mayor Park said that “the crisis of global climate change is a problem that not only nations but all the cities of the world must solve together”, and that “as a representative city of ICLEI and a metropolis of 10 million, Seoul will advance at the forefront of greenhouse gas reduction”.